About the only purpose would be for slower shutter speeds with wide apertures in bright light, but that's what neutral density filters are for -- not to mention, an uncommon and somewhat specialized area of photography where anybody serious about it is already going to know that you can't get good results with low ISO alone.

Over here in Africa we used to shoot with ASA 50 as standard, so I guess it's just something I'm used to from my film days. Using ISO 100 my shutter speeds go to 1/2000~4000 easily, but usually around 1/1000 most of the time. ND filters are a hassle.

My point was more that low-light and high-ISO performance isn't that important to everybody. Maybe I'm the only one, but at least that doesn't make it everyone.

On another point ... the 30D has a pretty crummy AF and I haven't really seen anything improve in the later models. Unfortunately for me the benchmark is the EOS 3 camera ... anything else since then has just been toy-grade.

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Happily ignoring the laws of physics and the rules of photography to create better pictures.

Best autofocus system of any camera on the market at the time of its release, best high ISO performance of any camera on the market at the time of its release, best video of any consumer DSLR....

There's a whole hell of a lot more to a camera than just its megapickle count.

Anybody who claims that the 5DIII isn't a big deal isn't a photographer or is just plain clueless.

It may well be the case that the advancements made in the 5DIII aren't relevant to your particular type of photography. And, if all you do is low ISO work of static subjects, you'd be exactly right.

But that's such a marginal part of photography that's already been so well served that it's ludicrous to suggest that that's all that matters.

Cheers,

b&

+1

To call the the MkII is a "superb" camera, and then in the same sentence say that the MkIII isn't good enough makes me think you haven't even held one, let alone put one through it's paces. Have fun with your DXO sensor scores, but on the whole, it's undeniably in a different league than the MkII.

Best autofocus system of any camera on the market at the time of its release, best high ISO performance of any camera on the market at the time of its release, best video of any consumer DSLR....

There's a whole hell of a lot more to a camera than just its megapickle count.

Anybody who claims that the 5DIII isn't a big deal isn't a photographer or is just plain clueless.

It may well be the case that the advancements made in the 5DIII aren't relevant to your particular type of photography. And, if all you do is low ISO work of static subjects, you'd be exactly right.

But that's such a marginal part of photography that's already been so well served that it's ludicrous to suggest that that's all that matters.

Cheers,

b&

So you are saying the 5D Mark III's AF and ISO performance is better than the 1DX? My point is many people upgraded just to have the latest and greatest. I would bet you 95% of 5D Mark III upgraders never go above ISO 640

-1I'll take that bet. That's a joke right? Or at least exaggeration for the sake of creating a point?

Why would I pay the same price as a Nikon D7100, for a camera with fewer features Will the 70D have 51 point autofocus Will the 70D shutter be tested 150,000 cycles Will the 70D have a 2,016 pixel RGB 3D Matrix Metering System Will the 70D have dual SDXC slots

Shutter lifecycle is irrelevant ...

Dual memory card slots are irrelevant ...

As for the rest of your specs...well, they're meaningless. What matters is the actual real-world autofocus and metering performance, ...

So you think that 61 point autofocus is important on a 1Dx, but irrelavant on a 70D The nice thing about Nikon is that they treat all their customers with respect. Nikon has no second class citizens when it come to autofocus and metering.

In a marketing driven world, having lesser specifications won't win the sales war.

Nikon only has second class citizens when it comes to their customer service Better specs don't equal respect, they are trying to compete.

Personally I think Canon has painted themselves into a corner with their mid-range cameras. The xxxD range offers exceptional value in terms of what you get and what you pay for it. The 1D and 5D series are workhorses. Where does that leave the xxD, 7D and 6D cameras? Let's face it, on paper the 700D has a better AF system than the 6D - except for centre-point zero-light capability. What's going to differentiate the 70D from the 7DII and the xxxD line?

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Nikon only has second class citizens when it comes to their customer service Better specs don't equal respect, they are trying to compete.

About the only thing stoping many people from switching is Nikons abysmal service recornd in the USA. At one time Nikon had a good reputation ... but NOT anymore.

BTW Nikon has had better focusing and metering for a long time, I've never understood Canon's lack of competitivness in this area. I guess focusing and metering aren't at the head of the list for Canon users

Personally I think Canon has painted themselves into a corner with their mid-range cameras. The xxxD range offers exceptional value in terms of what you get and what you pay for it. The 1D and 5D series are workhorses. Where does that leave the xxD, 7D and 6D cameras? Let's face it, on paper the 700D has a better AF system than the 6D - except for centre-point zero-light capability. What's going to differentiate the 70D from the 7DII and the xxxD line?

I think the 7DII will remain the flagship APS-C camera w/ all the bells and whistles, maybe like a 5DIII just w/ crop sensor. 70D will have to fit somewhere between the 7DII and t5i, much like the 60D fit between the 7D and T3i.

Both 70D and 7DII might share the same sensor (not 18MP) and DIGIC 5 processor, WiFi and GPS, but the 7DII would have dual DIGIC 5, faster fps, dual card slots, better weather-sealing, 100% VF coverage, and different controls. 7DII is the workhorse for sports and wildlife photographers. I imagine the 70D would get the 7D's current AF system and the 7DII would get an AF system like the 5DIII. The 70D will differentiate from the t5i w/ the features the 60D differentiated from the t3i: different controls, weather-sealing, more fps, bigger body, etc.

I've never understood Canon's lack of competitivness in this area. I guess focusing and metering aren't at the head of the list for Canon users

When I switched from Pentax to Canon in the mid-1990's, I was pretty chuffed with their auto-focus system. The metering system was somewhat iffy, but coming from an S1a with no meter whatsoever the Av and Tv modes were kind of neat. Eventually I switched to digital - the EOS 30D - from an EOS 3 and an EOS 300v. Well, the 300v has a better AF system than the 30D ... faster and more accurate ... and it was an "entry-level" camera!

I think Canon figured a DSLR didn't need a good AF system, simply because it is digital - as opposed to a film camera. So it will sell because it is digital and not because it has a good AF system (or at least as good as the last film cameras). Well, now they're in a corner ... 9, 11, 19, 61 ... big jump that last one. A 70D with 11 points won't hack it against the 700D and is hardly an improvement on the 60D; and 19 points will just make it a tweaked 7D; but how many the 70D will actually have will depend on the 7DII.

I think Canon should rationalise their line-up and merge the 70D and 7DII, as that's the only sensible thing to do. But they won't.

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Over here in Africa we used to shoot with ASA 50 as standard, so I guess it's just something I'm used to from my film days. Using ISO 100 my shutter speeds go to 1/2000~4000 easily, but usually around 1/1000 most of the time. ND filters are a hassle.

I guess I'm still not seeing the point.

If you're regularly at ISO 100 and 1/4000, then ISO 25 is only going to get you to 1/1000. If you're looking to slow the shutter, you're at least looking at 1/250 to sync with a flash and therefore, even with ISO 25, you're still needing at least a two-stop ND filter. And such a filter is nothing compared with the hassle of the types of flash that need to be synced at that speed.

Much more common when you're looking for a slow shutter is something in the half second range to smooth out flowing water. And, first, that generally looks ugly no matter what in direct sunlight (sunny f/16 is ISO 100 @ f/4 @ 1/4000). And, second, you're not going to get even within shouting distance of that during daytime hours no matter the ISO without some serious ND filters.

And then, after that, you're looking at several second long exposures to turn busy areas into ghost towns. No way in hell is that happening in bright daylight from ISO alone.

And if your'e a videographer, ND filters are part of your standard kit and, again, the least of your worries. Again, no ISO speed has ever been made that'll take you from 1/4000 to the 1/50 you need for a 180° shutter at 25 FPS.

So, do please tell me: in what real-world shooting situation would you want a shutter speed two stops slower (ISO 100 => ISO 25) that you can't reasonably stop down an additional two stops (f/4 => f/8) where you wouldn't already need significant ND filters in the first place?

For everything else, you're generally wanting the fastest shutter speed you can get. You mention Africa, parts of which can get bright, granted. But it's not ISO 100 @ f/11 @ 1/4000 bright, I'm pretty sure, and you were pretty specific about the 1/4000. Put me on the savannah shooting wildlife and the last thing on my mind would be wishing for a slower shutter speed. Put me in a village shooting kids at play and I'll be wanting as fast a shutter as I can get. Put me in that village shooting the architecture and my concerns will again be about the shutter getting too slow, not being too fast. Put me again on the savannah during the golden hour to shoot the landscapes and I'll really be watching that shutter speed and quickly boosting the ISO to stop the swaying of the vegetation in the evening breeze.

I really, truly, don't get this desire for even lower ISOs speeds. That ship sailed a loooooong time ago....

Yet another measurebator who cares more about meaningless numbers on a spec list than actual real-world performance.

Here's a serious question for all y'all Nikon trolls: would you rather have a D800 with its manly 36 megapickles and 14 stops of DxO DR, or would you rather have a 1Dx with its girly half-as-many 18 megapickles and 12 stops of DxO DR? And let's not forget that the D800 scores a near-perfed 95 on the DxO scale, while the 1DX is barely above average at an unimpressive 82.

Personally I think Canon has painted themselves into a corner with their mid-range cameras. The xxxD range offers exceptional value in terms of what you get and what you pay for it. The 1D and 5D series are workhorses. Where does that leave the xxD, 7D and 6D cameras? Let's face it, on paper the 700D has a better AF system than the 6D - except for centre-point zero-light capability. What's going to differentiate the 70D from the 7DII and the xxxD line?

I've shot with a 7d since the end of 2009, I think it easily qualifies as a workhorse...

The 5DIII (I'm not personally familiar with crop cameras) is noise-free at ISO 400. It's just as noise-free at ISO 200 and ISO 100. There's no more noise to be cleaned up, so what's there to be gained by ISO 25?

Being able to use the camera with extremely bright light and not need a filter.

Being able to take longer exposure photographs in normal lighting without needing a filter.

ISO25 film produced some excellent shots.

There might be a very good reason for no ISO25...... If it is so bright that you need it, you have a lot of light pouring into the camera.... and light is energy, and energy causes heating. What happens to your sensor on a long exposure? will the heating damage the sensor or will it just create a whole lot of thermal noise? Would you get a cleaner picture at higher ISO with a ND filter keeping the heat away from the sensor?

There might be a very good reason for no ISO25...... If it is so bright that you need it, you have a lot of light pouring into the camera.... and light is energy, and energy causes heating. What happens to your sensor on a long exposure? will the heating damage the sensor or will it just create a whole lot of thermal noise? Would you get a cleaner picture at higher ISO with a ND filter keeping the heat away from the sensor?

I don't know..... just asking....

You're not going to damage the sensor with any scenes even at EV 23, which is ISO 25 @ f/22 @ 1/4000, which you can also get with ISO 100 @ f/32 @ 1/8000 (which, depending on the lens, is the dimmest exposure you're going to get on a 5DIII).

What could very easily damage the sensor, at any level of brightness, with or without an ND filter, is prolonged direct exposure to the Sun. And the damage will be caused by the same method that causes blindness in humans who stare at the Sun. (Lasers can also fry a sensor as well as they can fry your eyes, but the damage is caused by a different mechanism.)

But there is a very good reason for no native ISOs below 100 (ish). The photosites have a maximum number of photons they can record to a single charge. Dump more than that many photons onto a photosite and it still records the same number for its full charge. The physics of it works in such a way that, if you shoot outside on a sunny day at 1/100s at f/16 with minimal / no analog amplification with a sensor that clips slightly above the brightest non-specular highlights in the scene, you'll have an optimal dynamic range for that imaging technology over most shooting conditions most people encounter.

Incidentally, no Canon camera actually shoots at ISO 50. When you set the camera to ISO 50, the meter changes, but the electronics still operates exactly the same way it does at ISO 100. If you shoot JPEGs, the onboard raw processor will divide every value coming off the sensor by two before converting it to a JPEG, thereby costing you a stop of exposure headroom. If you shoot RAW, the same RAW file gets created as if you shot at ISO 100 except that the metadata flag for ISO says "50" instead of "100." The RAW processor on your computer sees that, and it, too, divides every number in the RAW file by two before continuing with raw processing.

You might therefore wonder what the point is of ISO 50. The point is twofold. First, if you shoot JPEG, it's a wonderfully convenient in-camera way of doing ETTR when either your scene has no highlights or you don't care if they clip. And second, if you're planning on doing ETTR in the digital darkroom, you might as well shoot ISO 50 instead and get a much more useful preview image on the back of the camera, plus you'll save yourself a step in post-processing. Also, considering that most ETTR workflows I've encountered apply the exposure correction after all the tone curves and color adjustments have been made to the RAW file whilst ISO 50 does that stuff before, you're much more likely to get better results with ISO 50 than with ETTR.

Unless, of course, you actually know what you're doing with ETTR, in which case you probably already know that there's no point to ETTR. I'll once again again note that, unlike in the early days of DSLRs, there's no noise in modern DSLRs at ISO 100 so there's nothing to be gained any more from an image quality perspective in doing ETTR or, similarly, shooting ISO 50.

Cheers,

b&

P.S. Highlight Tone Priority is much like ISO 50 except in the opposite direction. It's baked-in ETTL, in other words. Considering the low noise levels of modern DSLRs, HTP is potentially much more useful in real-world shooting than ISO 50, especially in high dynamic range environments. b&